Nielsen: Android extends its lead in the US

No points for guessing who's on top in the smartphone race. For the time period of July, August and September, Android's U.S. market share grew from 39% to 42.8%, extending its lead once again. The Nielsen numbers match up pretty well with other statistical reports. The market is growing enough that Apple also increased its share, up to 28.3%. 44% of US mobile users now own a smartphone of one kind or another.

Breaking down the share of Android sales, HTC remains top dog in America with a 15% market share overall, with 35% of Android sales. Next is Motorola with 24.3%, followed closely by Samsung at 23.6%. That's an interesting metric, considering that Samsung is far and away the top manufacturer of total phones worldwide. Other Android manufacturers made up nearly 17% of Android's total, with just over 7% of total market share.

BlackBerry, Windows Phone/Mobile and Symbian continue their downward slide, despite the best efforts of their parent companies. So does WebOS, but calling HP's bumbling any sort of "best effort" would be a disservice to little league baseball teams everywhere. Between the two of them, Android and iOS control 71% of the US smartphone market, and an eye-popping 83% of all mobile app downloads. Keep in mind that Q4 results are likely to skew a bit with the launch of the iPhone 5 iPhone 4S - that tends to happen when you only have one release every year.